Uber-tidy bees defend their hives from disease

January 13, 2015

In an interview for New Scientist, Marla Spivak cautioned that to avoid reinfection, all beekeepers must be using hygienic colonies, warns Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota in St Paul. "When some beekeepers have susceptible stock with colonies full of mites, healthy colonies with low levels of mites try to rob honey out of these weakened colonies and get re-infested," she says.